Starbucks? MORE LIKE STARSUCKS AMIRITE????!

Last week I detailed my experience getting run out of Starbucks like a filthy vagrant despite my dedicated years of patronage. I got a response from the corporate office that said they had forwarded my e-mail to the district manager, who would be contacting me soon. Today I received said dispatch:

Daniel~
My name is Cheryl and I am the district manager for Starbucks Coffee Company in the Chico, Red Bluff and Susanville area. I am sorry not to have responded sooner, but did not get your email forwarded to me until my day off. I am currently looking into this and will be addressing it ASAP! Something that concerns me is that for an extended period your drink has been given a derogatory name, I’m ok with that if you call it that but not our partners, it is essentially a no water Iced Americano, which is a menu item just as a triple iced espresso is! I am very sorry for your experience and hope to be able to make it right for you, not only for your last experience but the continued experience! Please feel free to contact me and thank you so much for bringing this to our attention!

AH, VINDICATION! Even better was the fact that in the interim, I had already pinned a far lulzier version of my original e-mail for publication in the weekly edition of the Synthesis, which hit the streets this morning. It is reproduced below for your edification. More updates are sure to follow!!11 Stay tuned…

Starbucks Took Me on a War Hell Ride

Third Place: Anyone who reads this column with any sort of regularity knows that I go to Starbucks. Not, like, every once in awhile. I mean I really GO there. Like twice a day if not more. I have, for years, been an unapologetic patron of the Starbucks Corporation, for a number of reasons: being anti the antis, proximity, ease of operation to name a few. First and foremost however, was the fact that by going to Starbucks I always knew exactly what I was gonna get. It was (fairly) cheap, and the Starbucks in Downtown Chico was essentially the same as the Starbucks in the Austin, Texas airport or on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kansas. Moreover, the employees of Starbucks are trained to be deferentially welcoming and personable in the extreme, which can be creepy, but also nice when you walk in and get your drink without ever saying a word. This employee training, as well as the comfortable, homey decor of most Starbucks locations are part of a marketing technique used by the company that attempts to brand Starbucks your “Third Place,” after home and work, in which you feel most in your element. As contrived as this marketing scheme may seem, it certainly worked on me, as I found myself spending an inordinate amount of both time and money at the Downtown Chico Starbucks location.

Three Shots, Over Ice: Over the years, I’d cycled through a few different drinks of choice at my “Third Place,” from coffee, to white mochas, to non-fat lattes when I started packing on the lbs, finally settling on the Americano, which is just espresso with hot water in it, like coffee only a little bit smoother. Of course, a nice piping hot Americano is all well and good in the winter time, but as the weather starts to turn hot, switching it up to iced is a must. But something just seemed wrong with getting espresso shots on ice, then pouring water over it. After all, all that ice is just water waiting to happen. So instead of getting an venti (which in Starbucks parlance is a “large”) iced Americano, I just started ordering three shots over ice in a venti cup. Makes sense, yeah? I certainly thought so. The manager at the Downtown Starbucks however didn’t seem to thrilled, however, with the fact that by buying three shots on ice, for $2.15, then adding my own milk from the condiment bar, I was essentially getting a Venti Iced Latte, which runs a dollar and change more. But it’s not my fault that their menu has an obvious flaw, right? And besides, the profit margin on three shots of espresso in a cup with a little ice and a few ounces of milk is still probably nothing to laugh at, especially for a place with signs hanging all over the place saying things like “Your drink should be perfect every time” and that if anything was wrong with your drink, or you just didn’t like it, you should have the barista remake it. If they were willing to eat the price of an entire drink just because some old lady thought it was too sweet, you’d think that someone buying a drink off of the menu, and paying full price, every single damn day of the year would be kosher, even if there existed the potential of bleeding one more dollar out of said customer. After all, this was my “Third Place.”

Stealing: Apparenty, times are tough in Starbucksville. After all, they only did $2.53 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2008, which only translated to $108 million or so profit. Sure that might sound like a lot to most people, but to Mr. Starbuck, in his penthouse office, $108 million doesn’t even pay the phone bill. Maybe he was monitoring the closed-circuit cameras at the Downtown Starbucks this last week, because suddenly, instead of serving me my daily drink with a forced smile, knowing that there was a dollar lost but two gained, the manager of the Downtown Starbucks decided to finally call me out as the milk thief I am. “You’re stealing,” she said, as she lambasted me in front of a gathered assembly of morning coffee drinkers. I practically came in my pants out of pure shock. The old timer working the register seemed equally bewildered, as the process of trained pleasantries and customer-always-being-right attitude that had been drilled into his head in employee training was suddenly flying out of the window in the face of literally tens of cents worth of “stolen” milk. “Are you serious?” I asked, incredulous. “You’re stealing,” she repeated, demanding that I not only pay the extra $1.60 for my splash of non-fat milk, but in the process, acknowledge that my frugality was in fact criminal and I should be ashamed of myself. And maybe I should be. But guess what? I’m not.

Fuck It: Long story short, I feel like the dude whose friends all told him the girl was a whore, but he kept dating her anyway, until she gave him Syphilis and he died. Starbucks gave me emotional Syphilis and it’s my own damn fault. If you go to Starbucks, stop. If you don’t go there, don’t ever start going there, unless you have to take a shit some time, then you should definitely go there. If you work there, quit. If you don’t work there, don’t ever apply. If you’re the landlord of Downtown Starbucks, raise the rent immediately. If you’re reading this, Mr. Starbuck, here’s a drink for you: one-pump White Mocha straight from the bottom of my balls, extra hot, extra whipped. If you’re good maybe I’ll even throw in an extra shot.

Related posts

• Starbucks Losing Customers Left And Right, Including Me (1)
• Watch Yo’ Backs, Starbucks Employees (0)
• Starbucks really “going green”? (1)
• Recipe for Ass Piss (0)
• Quentin Tarantino Likes Starbucks And Whipping The Hell Out of Foreigners (0)
• New York Mets Fire Manager Willie Randolph (0)